If he smiled at a girl, his classmates would come after him. If he got a good grade on a report card, they'd ask to see it and then tear it up. The cleft palate he was born with in Puerto Rico made it hard for him to speak until the age of 7, when he had surgery to fix it. By then it was the 1990s, and he was one of roughly 200 students learning to speak English in Albany public schools. He was an avid reader and writer of Spanish. But with little fluency in English, words failed him when he tried to talk his way out of a fight. And so he fought.

What his classmates didn't know was that every day after school, after the fights, Nova would go home and practice back flips on his mom's bed. His peers were obsessed with flipping. At recess, they'd all gather round in the hills outside the playground at Arbor Hill Elementary and see who could do the best flips.

"I would throw myself backward in my mom's bed all day long until I got it," he recalled. "And once I was really good I went out there and showed them I got skills."

From then on, the boys always called Nova to come join them in the hills. He had found a way in. No English necessary.

The number of English-language learners (ELL) and immigrants seeking opportunity and safe haven in Albany has surged in recent years, handing the city school district hundreds of students who are not just new to the English language but to the American way of life.

In the last decade, Albany schools have seen their ELL population balloon from the roughly 200 to 300 students in Nova's day to nearly 1,000, with many new arrivals hailing from refugee camps in southeast Asia. Today, one in 10 students at Albany city schools are new to the English language. That number is only expected to grow, as the city prepares to take in refugees fleeing civil war, poverty and terrorism in Syria.

To serve these students, who data shows are far more likely to miss school and drop out than their peers, the district has had to look beyond academic interventions to the social and emotional turmoil plaguing them behind the scenes. So the district went on a bit of a hiring spree — something that's not so easy for an urban school district with abundant needs and scant resources.

"A lot of these kids don't know what a urinal is," said Thomas Giglio, director of the district's English as a new language department (ENL) and Refugee Services. "A lot of these families are born in refugee camps, and a lot of these kids have experienced post-traumatic stress. We can give them the proper academic services, but if we ignore the social/emotional aspect of where they're coming from, they're not going to be healthy kids who can succeed."

The district hired Giglio — a two-time principal who had most recently led Delaware Community School, home to a district-wide bilingual program — to oversee its ENL department in 2014. At the time, the district had about 20 full-time employees serving English language learners, mostly teachers, literacy coaches and translators.

Giglio soon set about hiring people who could address the social and emotional needs of students — people like Nova, who knew what it was like to arrive in a new place scared, shy and oftentimes traumatized.

After mastering the back flip, Nova went on to master football, basketball and baseball. He won a scholarship to play football at University at Albany, where he was on a pre-law track until a counselor helped him realize he was uniquely positioned to help kids who would face the same challenges now as he did when he was a newcomer to the mainland U.S.

Today, he works as a bilingual social worker for the district, talking to English language learners about their fears, their dreams, their home lives and their needs. The district has found that a fair number of immigrants are just not accustomed to sending their kids to school. School isn't free in every country, and some families expect their daughters to stay home and attend to household needs while the boys forgo school to work. But sometimes, the only thing standing between a student and school is learning how to catch the bus. And sometimes the thing that's holding them back is the mistaken fear that a teacher will hit them if they give the wrong answer in class.

Other times, their needs are much more intensive. And in those cases, Nova's job is to seek outside help — like counseling or therapy or social services.

"I have a student who came here with his dad, and his father was killed by police," Nova said. "He was from Mexico, and had just got here and now he don't have no father. He don't have nobody. He can't think about school. So who does he talk to? Who does he go to who can relate?"

He goes to Nova, who does his best to be a guidepost for students in a strange new world.

In many ways, American schools are a reprieve for newcomers — culture shock and all. But there is a big hump to get over.

Melak Rabeeah grew up attending schools in war-torn Iraq and Syria built from wood and rock, without central heat or air, where the teachers hit kids when they chewed gum or gave a wrong answer. She was always cold and often scared.

"In my country, we didn't want to go to school because of the teachers," she recalled, three years after her family left Iraq for Albany.

The 13-year-old is quick to laugh now. A smile rarely leaves her face. Mr. Nova often helps her solve issues with other students, including the occasional girl-boy drama ("I have five sisters," Nova interjects).

But when she first arrived in Albany, she was often the butt of jokes and pranks from kids who knew she wouldn't tell the teacher because, well, she couldn't speak the language.

Hteeku Say and Gay Law Soe can relate. The brothers from Thailand speak Karen, the third most common language at Albany schools after English and Spanish. When they first arrived in Albany nearly four years ago, they knew barely any English: Yes, no and thanks.

About this series

The Times Union series "Our Immigrant Story" is being published in conjunction with a community-wide celebration of immigrants and cultural diversity in the Capital Region. A monthlong series of exhibits, lectures and performances (schedule online at http://www.timesunion.com/immigration/) will culminate in an Albany Pro Musica Concert, "A City of Immigrants," on April 3 at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.

Coming Tuesday:

The Times Union will look in depth at how the Newcomer School is expected to serve as a community hub for Albany's growing population of immigrants and refugees. On timesunion.com/immigration.

The American education system took some getting used to. The boys had never seen a cafeteria before, and weren't used to changing classrooms throughout the day. So many changes at once were overwhelming for them, and skipping school altogether was tempting.

"When I first came here I'm scared to come to school," said Soe, 15. "I almost cried like a few days. I don't know anybody. Nobody speak my language in my school. Then I met Karen people from different country. It's getting better and better."

As their proficiency in English grows, so does their confidence, students and educators say. They go from learning to read to reading to learn. They raise their hands in class. They look adults in the eye. They start worrying about gossip and music and clothes, instead of how all the kids might stop and stare when they speak up in class.

But that's only if they make it to school in the first place.

In September 2014, the New York State Board of Regents implemented new regulations requiring districts to provide a certain level of education and services to English language learners. The regulations, which went into effect at the start of the current school year, mandate that districts must provide a bilingual program for any one language that is spoken by 20 or more students in any one grade level.

This makes sense, perhaps, for medium-sized districts where it's possible to count the number of bilingual programs on one or two hands, officials say. But in Albany, where students collectively speak more than 53 languages, Giglio estimates the unfunded mandate would wind up costing the district $500,000 to $750,000 a year — and that's a conservative estimate.

The new regulations also require classroom teachers to differentiate their instruction based on five levels of proficiency — entering, emerging, transitioning, expanding and commanding. The professional development alone to ensure this kind of instruction has been staggering, he said.

But the Albany City School District has an idea — a solution that could satisfy the new academic mandates and bolster the social and emotional support services that it knows boosts attendance and discourages dropouts.

In fact, as the district serving the most English language learners in the Capital Region by far, the solution could even benefit nearby districts that don't have the financial means to implement their own bilingual and newcomer programs.

It's called the Newcomer School, and it would serve as a transitional program for newly arrived English language learners — equipping them with the ins and outs of everything from how to use a urinal and catch the school bus to how to get the proper immunizations and speak up in class. Students would enroll on a voluntary basis for two years (the time it typically takes to become English-proficient and build intermediate literacy skills) and take credit-bearing courses toward graduation.

With Giglio at the helm and a cast of new ENL staff, the district is hoping a $1.6 million grant from the state's Bureau of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance will come through this spring, in time for the school to open in the fall.